Eyes of Thunder
by Nyx
Summary: A strange, dreamy style of writing; a novel focusing on Ginny.
1. Ottery St. Catchpole

**Eyes of Thunder  
Part 1: Ottery St. Catchpole  
By Nyx**

A/N: This story is a crossover with "The House On Mango Street" vingette 'Minerva Writes Poems'. You don't have to have read "Mango Street" to understand it, though, and it's probably better if you haven't. There *are* some allusions to other fanfictions in this. See if you can catch them. As always, enjoy. This is my first attempt at writing a longer fanfiction; it's done in the style of a collection of vingettes.

-----

**Good Daughter**

I've always been stuck in the same place, the same little corner of Ottery St. Catchpole. The broken-down house at the end of E. Douglas is where I live: the Burrow, a "quaint" little ramshackle place that I tell people to go to when they want to visit. It's not my home, though: its chicken-scratched yard is nothing like the place I dream of. I cannot imagine spending the rest of my life with the pipes rattling in the attic and daily fixing something-or-other with a quick spell. 

Temporary, I tell myself. Just until I get my own job and a nice flat in the city, just until I marry into money and can have that beautiful Victorian mansion with sweeping, sloping lawns and a house elf or two to take care of things. But I know how these things go.

The sorting hat said to me, what are you doing in your family? You know that you don't belong. You would really do better somewhere else - but since you'll be a misfit if you're anything but the tradition, I suppose it'll have to be GRYFFINDOR! I don't feel like a Gryffindor. What are you doing in your family, it asked, and before I could give it all sorts of answers. I'm drying the dishes. I'm de-gnoming the garden. I'm being a good daughter and getting a summer job and giving Mother the money that was mine, that I worked for myself. But I find that there isn't really anything to say.

What _am _I doing in my family? What am I doing in that broken-down house at the end of E. Douglas? I know I don't belong here. There must be some mistake.

-----

**Miscalculation**

It honestly really wasn't my fault when the beaker spilled over in Potions, really it wasn't. I was only handing it to Geneva and she was taking it, reaching out far too slowly and not quite grabbing in time to steady it.

Professor Snape whose hair is always greasy, like the chain on a bike, told me that I could stay afterwards and sort out the monkey hairs. Brown or black or white, the tiny strands blurred together and stuck in funny ways to my fingers. I pulled one of my own hairs out of my head and laid it next to the others on the paper that let me see the contrast. It was long and florid red and not like the rest at all, but I defiantly dropped it into the little pile of white hairs. No! Not like that! Professor Snape is very good at scolding me, very good at scolding the other Gryffindors. What would you do, Professor Snape, if I told you I wasn't a Gryffindor? Because right now I don't think I am. I'm a Hoopooakabra and a Queverene and a Malacroft, but not a Gryffindor or a Slytherin or any of the Hogwarts houses. 

You are showing me something on the blackboard, but I don't understand it. Something about monkey hairs and what they're made of, something insanely advanced. I'm a fourth year, I'm not supposed to know this yet! But you knew this by your fourth year, didn't you? You write something, some algebra problem, and I see a mistake.

Professor, you've made a slight miscalculation, I say. You didn't round right. You use rounding and significant figures in magic _and _ Muggle science, right? 

All you can do is stare and sputter, snap at me and feel like an idiot. But I know why you made me stay after when Geneva spilled the beaker.

-----

**Great Hall, After Dinner**

Manta with the beautiful auburn hair, you looked at me yesterday. I always wanted that color hair - like my mother's, brownish to soften the red! of a Coke can that always contrasts with everything I stand against or look at and makes my face seem even paler. Your eyes are chocolatey brown, Manta - how did you get those eyes? They don't seem to fit with the rest of you at all.

After dinner the Great Hall is muddled and that is why I noticed you. You're a first-year, but you look so much braver and older and stronger than I do and I envy you for it. The fashionable green wraps you wear on your wrists tell me you're a Slytherin - is that why you carry yourself so proudly? You stood right next to me and turned your head to search for someone in the crowd, and that's when our eyes connected.

Don't you understand, Manta? If we could only trade places I would be so much happier. You are tall and slender and beautiful, even at eleven, and I still have the baby fat that won't ever go away and the dimples in my cheeks. You have new robes and new dresses and new books - don't you ever wish that you weren't so rich sometimes?

Manta, Manta, Manta. Wishing isn't helping but sometimes I've got to indulge, have that triple-decker ice cream sundae from Florean Fortescue's Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor. The Great Hall. After dinner. You made me feel so small, but so in awe. Manta.

-----

**My Three Knuts**

I'm the queen of the world! Anjy, you are irrepressible today and I know that I could be irrepressible if I tried. But I'm too tired to try. Today I feel like I have been living a thousand years, like I have been carrying the heaviest load up a hundred and fifty mountains. I don't even really know why.

My brother is Ron, at least the one who is closest to my age, and he is always trusting me. It's OK, she's my little sister, she knows when to keep her mouth shut. And I do know, some days. But other days I am as open and free as anything and as babbling as a stream, and the words just flow out of my mouth. But he still keeps trusting me. This time, he knows I will do better. And I will the next time, too, and the time after that. But he stopped trusting me today, and I saw him walking alone, talking to himself. Why did you stop trusting, Ron? What did I do, after all that time of trusting and telling and trusting again?

And the not-trusting wasn't enough. His friends who smile and say, oh how cute little Ginny is, all know things about him that I don't. He doesn't tell me things anymore; he tells them, and they laugh and smile together, not knowing that I'm thinking and dreaming and wishing that they would let me in.

But Angie is still prancing about with the little tiara on her head, romping through the fourth-year dorm, and I don't want her to get outside. Anjy! You are the queen of the world, but queens of the world don't prance, and Anjy stops and flounces down onto the bed and crosses her legs like a little girl. 

Why not? she asks. Why don't they? Queens of the world could do anything if they wanted to. Anjy is like that. One moment she is bouncing off the walls and the next she is calm and composed and asking the strangest questions. Anjy is always irrepressible. I don't know, I tell her, but have you ever seen Queen Elizabeth prance? And I've given my three Knuts and that's the end of that discussion.

-----

**Vines**

The sky is purple, splashed with stars in nonsensical patterns. It's not the way the sky is supposed to be. Or is it? 

Sitting alone on the tiled rooftop of the Great Hall, I feel at peace. Happy. My house will have a tiled roof. Perhaps it will be a Mediterranean villa, with stucco walls and a brick patio and vines climbing up and over it. A vine's playground. There are no vines in this part of Hogwarts - the only ones that are allowed to cover the walls are in the old castle, the part that is half falling down. This year part of it fell, and we are forbidden from entering it - but I find it to be the most perfect part of the great rambling Hogwarts whole. The old castle, the castle that looked out on the forested lands when the Founders first found the spot for their school.

I can imagine the sight they must have seen as they flew on their homemade broomsticks towards their chosen place: the abandoned stones jutting upwards like a lone tooth in the great green gum of the earth, windows gaping, gardens overgrown, pigs and sheep running free through the forest. The turrets would have beseeched them to come, to make their home in this inhospitable place - to make it beautiful again, and lively. And they would have answered the call.

Right now with the purply sky and the dancing stars and the tiled roof smooth and slippery under me, I can be proud of what has happened. Hogwarts is huge, filled with laughter and love and life. And slowly, the vines tear down the old to make way for the new.

-----

**Téa And Me**

Téa has a brother who is younger than she is and he's an awful bore. Just like Percy. Of course Téa is just a year older than me so he's in my year - a Ravenclaw, always studying studying studying. He's never met a book he didn't like.

Téa is as exotic as the most beautiful jungle flower. She makes me feel like a dandelion in comparison - a dandelion or some other sort of weed. Something that would not be seen in any respectable garden. Manta is a lot like Téa, but she is younger and softer, less brazen. Téa's hair is raven-black and glossy, falling almost to the floor in beautiful waves; Manta's shyly peeks out of gauzy scarves or tightly bound buns, wispy and soft, curly. 

It's funny how hair shows itself. Me, mine is bone-straight, but it's always clean and pristine. Téa's brother's is in tight little curls that grow close to his head, and he shaves them every Tuesday. His hair grows fast and by Friday they're there again, like little springs only recalcitrant. Anjy's is crazy like her - frizzy and wavy, forming a blond halo around her face. And Ron's is slicked down in a hairstyle that went out a few years ago. 

I wouldn't want to be Téa, though, not for all the glorious long black hair in the world. Téa is a Hufflepuff with a secret, and she can never ever tell. I don't know what it is, but I see the shiner she has when she waits on Platform 9 3/4 with the rest of us. Who gave you that black eye, I wonder, as she chats with Padma Patil. Is that your secret?

But I'll never know. She is a Hufflepuff with a secret and she can never ever tell, not even when I see the pain on her face as she kisses her father goodbye and boards the Hogwarts Express.

-----

**Sink or Swim**

Sink or swim, Max the Brain told me. Sink or swim. That's the way life is. I'm gonna swim. What about you?

Swim, I told him. Swim like the fishes in the deep blue sea, and he laughed a little before explaining the rest of the transfiguration to me. He tutors me at lunchtime, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I fixed his dress robes for him to make them the right length again. Max is the only person at Hogwarts who is poorer than me, and he's an orphan without anything at all. He goes on charity and always has the oldest, most worn things.

In my mind I imagine telling him that I'm gonna sink. It's an option. After all, I've never swum a stroke so far.

-----

**Purity Control**

Virginia means pure, virgin, bla bla bla bla until Anjy winkingly puts a charm on my ears so they look like they've fallen off. Defense Against the Dark Arts sucks like a vacuum cleaner. And you! Professor Grolier turns on Anjy next, ignoring my charmed ears. Anjy is a made-up name, but it comes from Angela, which means angel...

According to Professor Grolier your name can be used against you. Mine could be used to make me boil myself to death or something, trying to be as clean and pure as I could possibly be - and Anjy's, well, they could make her jump off a building trying to fly like an angel. 

Virginia is my name, but only because it was given to me. My name is really Ginny, I think, because if you call me Virginia I won't answer to it. Unless you are Professor Grolier. VIR-gin-i-ah, she shouts, enunciating each sound until the name is almost unrecognizable. You are dis-tra-c-ted to-DAY. I consider talking back and acting sassy. No, Professor, I don't seem to be dis-tra-c-ted, I'm distracted though, is it the same thing? But I don't dare, because Professor Grolier hates people who talk back to her. 

It's interesting how something that's pure like Virginia can be boiled down to nothing more than  
vir  
gin  
ia  
vir  
gin  
Gin.

-----

**Stood on the Shoulders**

They want me to see far, to see into the future. Come on, the tall one says, the one with greasy salt-and-pepper hair that makes me think of cheap all-night diners. You're just being difficult. 

Yeah, the short one takes up the cry, just difficult. You know, people have been seeing the future since the dawn of time. Bird entrails and all that.

But I don't want to pick through the future and the past. It's hard enough knowing I could. Professor Trelawney must have found these two, told them that I just needed a good scare to look forward and be the greatest Seer of all time. Greatest Seer. Ha. She acts like she's so good, acts so proud of her accomplishments. But the timeline of the world is laid out before me like a map, or could be. 

What lies ahead are things that are too horrible. I don't want to think about them right now.

Sorry, I reply to them, smiling innocently. It's like there's a block. Something stopping me from seeing it. It wasn't there this morning but this morning I wasn't looking, so come back in two weeks and maybe by then it'll be gone? Total bullshit, I know it and they know it, but they don't dare put me in a worse mood than I'm already in.

Stick in the mud.

Obstructing the Ministry.

We can make you tell us, you know, they remind me. But I'm already slipping out the door. They can't make me tell them, because if they did it would be classified as distracting a seer, something that can result in untrue predictions. Never mind that I'm not the traditional kind of seer.

If I have seen far, it's because I've stood on the shoulders of giants.

-----

**Or Not**

One, two, three, four! From the window I can hear first-years playing in the snow. Five! Six! They're playing snow hide-and-seek, seeing who can hide themselves the best under snowdrifts without using magic. Their toes are kept warm by magic, and they happily toss the powder around. Seven, eight, nine, ten! The voices drift up to my ears. 

I don't recognize anyone, and I remember how I looked up to the big sixth and seventh years when I was a first year. They probably know me. But I'm hidden up in the Gryffindor dorm like Rapunzel, locked away from the snow and the sleet and the crisp winter air. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen...

They'll never find me, because I'm not part of their game. Never. Not up here, not in my cozy corner. I'm smiling for some strange reason, and I sit on my bed with its eiderdown comforter wrapped around me. Nyah, nyah, you'll never guess where I'm hiding!

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Ready or not. Here they come.

-----

**Daniel 8:17**

I didn't want to talk about it this morning. I still don't. Geneva and Anjy woke me up by setting off a Filibuster's No-Heat, Wet-Start firework in front of my face; I blinked and started to cry. They didn't understand why, and I was perfectly happy not explaining to them - so they climbed back into their own beds, puzzled. 

But I knew why I was so upset. I knew my own mind. I knew that I had dreamed of the endtime, and I knew that the prophecy would be filled. It would be. It was told to me, in the dream; told to me by the haughty voice that I knew but could not place, the voice that became strangely soft towards the end. Bright nights and dark days, Light skies and black ways, Glory and justice one and the same, Heavens open with a piercing rain, The lightning hearkens to its kin, Every country purged of sin, Yet somehow they will go on, Fighting, fighting till the break of dawn. I was frightened by it, and that's why I cried at Anjy and Geneva.

::a sulfuric smell bites sharply at my nose; the dust is up again and I cover my face with a handkerchief to keep it off:: I am remembering again, and I shut my eyes and pull the covers over my head. I'm safe, I've had my hot cocoa and brushed my teeth and the curtains are pulled on the canopy bed. It's just me. Prophecy comes from within and I know I'll be shaking and sweating by the time I awaken.

::the eyes of thunder, they hover, they blink, they're clouding my vision:: What is happening? What is going on? I close my eyes and the visions come back to me. The nightmares come back. I'm afraid... and I am angry.

I used to be such a little person. The youngest in a family of eight. Remarkable only becauseI know Harry Potter. Now I'm a big person, the Ministry of Magic has caught on, and I can see from one end of history to the other.

But being a big person isn't all it's cracked up to be, and neither is the endtime.

-----  
finis part 1  
-----

Index of vingettes in part 1:  
Good Daughter  
Miscalculation  
Great Hall, After Dinner  
My Three Knuts  
Vines  
Téa and Me  
Sink or Swim  
Purity Control  
Stood on the Shoulders  
Or Not  
Daniel 8:17

A/N: This is my first truly long fic. Please review! It would really help a poor vingette writer to get better at long fics. 

The prophecy Ginny has:  
Bright nights and dark days  
Light skies and black ways  
Glory and justice one and the same  
Heavens open with a piercing rain  
The lightning hearkens to its kin  
Every country purged of sin  
Yet somehow they will go on  
Fighting, fighting till the break of dawn.

~Nyx~  
The blabbing, gaudy and remorseful day  
Has sunk into the bosom of the sea  
-Shakespeare  
www.geocities.com/nyxfics 


	2. Genocide

**Eyes of Thunder  
Part 2: Genocide  
By Nyx [nyxfics@hotmail.com]**

A/N: This is my first long fic. Please read and review, telling me what I can improve on.  
The next part will be from Professor McGonagall's point of view.   
Disclaimer: I own them. I own them all. And yet... somehow... I control them not... ::snif:: Story is (c) Nyx 2000, as is any original characters.

-----

**Queen of a Thousand Eyes**

Professor Trelawney in her purple robes and purple scent of incense. She came to me last night, came to me and kept the dreams away. I fell down in Divination a few days ago and that was why she sent for the men from the Ministry, that was why, and she hoped that I might be able to tell them something. She was not her airy-fairy self and I don't know why, but I'm grateful, so grateful that she is keeping me safe from the dreams.

You're special, she told me, and her yellow robes fluttered with a waft of patchouli as she sat down on my bed. It reminded me of far away, of Egypt where we went three summers ago. You need to be careful. Those Ministry men, they want to keep us safe, but if you can't tell them you don't have to. And that is how it goes, and you are the Queen of a thousand eyes, you can see anything and hide anything. You are in charge. And so she told me, and I slept fine, and if I dreamed I didn't remember.

In the morning she was gone, but the incense smell still lingered. Purple robes. Purple smell. Overgrown butterfly Professor Trelawney, keeping me safe from the dreams and the eyes that watch me, the eyes and the voice I cannot place. Why does it still haunt me then? Why can I not let it go? I don't want the dreams. But the dreams want me.

-----

**Hallows**

The pumpkins are big this year, that's what Hagrid said. The pumpkins are big, and he gave me a seed that was as long as my thumb. That's how big they are, big enough for those seeds! The orange pulp was in big heaps by his cottage and made the air smell like pumpkin juice, and he brought the pumpkin back to the castle, his nose just on top of it like a little red cherry. If Hagrid was older he would be Santa Claus.

Hagrid's pumpkin garden is big and dark, and there are lots of little shadows between the biggest pumpkins that are hallows. I call them hallows to myself, when I think that nobody can hear. Hallows. And on All Hallows' Eve the world is a hallow, the little shadow between the big pumpkins, and everything magical happens.

October 31. 10-31. And this year Friday 10-31. It will be a day of power, even more than 10-13, which everyone knows is the best day for hexes in the year. Friday 10-31 will be a day for great things to happen.

Sometimes great things happen, but nobody notices. I wonder if they happen even when it's not the right day. I never noticed before.

-----

**And Then There Were None**

Genocide in London.

There they were, and then they were not. I knew through the Halloween feast that something was wrong; I had goose pimples all up and down my arms and legs, and I felt as though the cold autumn air was sneaking in through cracks in the Great Hall. Finally I shuddered and my teeth were chattering, and Téa who was walking past to find some more pumpkin juice noticed and Madame Pomfrey took me up to the hospital wing. Only there wasn't much she could do. Hot cocoa only made me worse and ice packs froze me, and I lay under the covers of a bed curled up in a tiny ball.

Professor Trelawney, Professor Trelawney, where are you now? Surely you can feel it too. And I can hear the words that Madame Pomfrey said as she passed by the bed - You-Know-Who back, it's too late for those poor Muggles, four hundred killed, a hundred more missing, what by the gods are we going to do? They run through my head incessantly although I tell them to stop. Professor! Only I know she can't feel it, or she'd be in the hospital wing too, as miserable and cold as I.

I've heard of the massacres of the past. World War II, where they slaughtered people because they were Jews or gay. Tazmania - and somewhere something tells me that that was the only genocide that worked, the only one that survived. There has never been a magical war that was big. And I shudder again, and feel my muscles begin to tense and relax - what is happening, my God, what's happening, but all I wanted was my own place and a house-elf, this doesn't help - only I can't find my mouth anymore. My body twists and turns and when I try to stop it it hurts - Madame Pomfrey yelling that she's siezing, she's seizing, grand mal, it's got to be, someone hold her down, no you idiot not a body-bind that will hurt her, and then even her voice is gone, just for a second, and I am plunged into glorious silence for a fleeting moment.

::wormtail::

Screaming, loud, and hands pushing me down - someone trying to hold my head but I break free and thrash it from side to side - get me out of this!

::you are my servant wormtail::

The Necromancer, the Necromancer, I hear myself saying. But what am I saying? It's not me, is it? And I hurt all over, I need to be free - why are they holding me? I can't move, I can't move, I need to move -

::you die for me now wormtail::

And the world explodes in a burst of bright blue light.

-----

**Professor's Secrets**

Professor McGonagall is hiding again.

Oh, she's not hiding like running away or anything. She's hiding behind a mask of sorts, hoping that nobody will put on their witch sight and see her as she truly is - not the mask she's projected, but her real face. I think she uses the mask most of the time. She had it on in my first year, but I barely notice even, just remembered it today and thought about her so-stern self.

Today she's just a little woman, not the proud perfect Minerva M. McGonagall we see most days. There are tears on her face and I can tell that her voice is hitching and sore with my witch sight on - because of course witch sight means hearing, too. What are you crying about? I want to ask her. Why are you crying? But of course that's not an option - I mean, what would happen if I tried it? She would deny it, of course, tell me I needed to work on my witch sight, and go off on her sad way.

Who else is like her? I wonder to myself. How many things do we not see? How many secrets can one person keep? I have never kept a secret, at least, not one like how I feel. Am I the only one?

There are more questions than answers. The world is like that.

-----

**Crackdust, Black Dust**

There's black dust in the air. There was when I got summoned out the the greenhouses to talk to Professor Sprout and find out if I might have eaten something to cause the seizure I had - because that's what it was, seizure, an ugly word that scrapes against my mouth.

The dust clogged my nose, my mouth; it grated against my eyes, assaulting them like a thousand tiny razors. I remember bending over at the waist, pulling my hair blindly around my face, and groping for the door-handle, but I don't remember any more. Fainted. A Ravenclaw - Marjorie Majors, I think her name is - saw me staggering in, and she said I was gasping for air, blue in the face, covered in black. Quick thinker, Marjorie Majors, looked to see if there was something in my mouth. Somehow she got the dust out of my mouth, and I started breathing again. And that's when I remember again, the pile of spit and dust on the parquet floor, dust like fine sand, black fine sand.

Madame Pomfrey wanted me to go back up to the hospital wing but I wouldn't let her. No, no thank you, I said, and pulled my sweater a little tighter around me. I'm fine. I'll just go wash off. The dust was everywhere and I scrubbed to get it off me in the showers, only it made my skin as red as my hair and redder. I was scoured from head to toe, but I was clean, and breathing.

In, out, in, out. It's such a fragile thing, the lungs and heart and life.

-----

**Extremities**

Wirft zie auf die Fenster, Gretel says, and the firework flies out the window like that. Gretel was a transfer from Durmstrang - her and her brothers, Jakob said Yakkob and Jan said Yan when they came to England from Germany - and she is very good at moving things around. That's what my - ah - talent is, she says often. Haltingly. Just because she won't take a language spell. I don't need a wand for spells, no, just my finger.

Lemme tell you. I was four years old and they laced a unicorn hair through that finger. I don't believe her, but then she's so serious that I have to, she's showing me a tiny puckered scar on the fingertip. That's where, and presses on it. A spark shoots out, falls on my arm, burns it a little before I smother the flame. She doesn't know why, just that it was her Mama's friend that did it, her Mama's friend who is dead now from the riots in Berlin years ago.

Dark magic, I tell her, and I try pressing on the scar. I can't touch it, can't do anything without feeling a bolt of lightning right down my arm and into my gut. Yep, Dark magic all right.

Don't tell me about Dark, she whispers at me, and now she is shivering like I was at the Halloween feast. Dark is me, was me, will be me. If I let it be. Geneva and Anjy come in with their heavy backpacks from the Jokers' Club that was Fred and George's last gift to the school, and trailing behind them is Aggie coming from somewhere else.

Aggie and Gretel are together, at least when nobody can see, keeping it away from other people. Nobody in our dorm room minds, because it's not like they're all over each other. Just Aggie and Gretel, hug and a friendly kiss every once in a while. Best friend necklaces that mean more than best friend. And Ginny Anjy Geneva keeping the secret, for now.

Ginny, Anjy, Geneva, Aggie, Gretel. G's and A's this year. We're closer than sisters, closer than friends, the Gryffindor crew. And Gretel and Aggie are safe with us, but I'm sure that if they weren't Gretel's magic finger could take care of it.

-----

**The Anasazi**

Cold blue eyes, pale, stormy, the color of the sky. Cloudy sky. Icy eyes, eyes that scare me. And it was not, not mine, only it was mine because I had seen it to be so.

That - is - so, that - is - so, says the grandfather clock in the corner. That - is - so. And it must be so.

I can't imagine, though, the softness that the voice suddenly gained with those eyes. Not the voice in the prophecy, not the person to whom the eyes belong. It's not the same; he's a Slytherin, and that voice wasn't a Slytherin's. Not. Slytherin. Only there's something, something in the back of my mind. You are a Slytherin, you know it. The eyes are Slytherin so why are you afraid.

The insides of my eyelids are sparkling with colors and I open them quickly. Quickly quickly quickly before they explode. Bright colors still dance, bright colors, against the moving black of the robes in the Great Hall. They fly over heads, over Téa's and Harry's and Manta's, dancing still, until I lock eyes with the one I fear most, Draco Malfoy...

...the one who fears me?

-----  
finis part 2  
-----

List of Vingettes:

Queen of a Thousand Eyes  
Hallows  
And Then There Were None  
Professor's Secrets  
Crackdust, Black Dust  
Extremities  
The Anasazi

Notes on the text: Any misspelling of German words is my fault, as is any bad grammar. I'm not very good at German; I've only been taking it for two months! The name Anasazi is the name of an Indian tribe in New Mexico; however, the name was given to them by a rival tribe, and means "Ancient Enemy." Lots of "Indian names" are like that; the explorers were exceedingly dumb and we still use their dumb names. This was a short part, but I needed to get done with it. Ginny has no more to say right now; we're moving on to McGonagall. 


	3. Minerva Writes Poems

**Eyes of Thunder  
Part 3: Minerva Writes Poems  
By Nyx [nyxfics@hotmail.com]**

A/N: *READ THIS!* This part is from McGonagall's perspective. *READ THIS!*  
See Nyx. See Nyx screw with timelines. Well, I'm pulling a Mena on you and saying that McGonagall is just a leetle beet - well, about ten years older than MWPP. That makes her... oh, forty or fifty. I don't care if JK says she's a "sprightly seventy," I've already messed Ginny up, so why not McGonagall?  
Disclaimer: I am she and she is me and we are all together. Not mine. Some of it's J.K.R.'s, some of it's Sandra Cisneros's. OC's and story line are (c) Nyx 2000. Mangling of German is my fault.  
Ratings: PG-13. HP/The House On Mango Street crossover.

-----  
Love is not love unless love is vulnerable. - Theodore Roethke  
-----

**Banana Split-tilpS ananaB**

Red hair, hazel eyes, just the color of tea with honey. I open the door with the mask off and I can tell that she's surprised - frightened? - at the fact that my feelings are showing so plainly. She mutters something. Very well then, I say, and she's inside my quarters, sitting down. The cushions on the armchair are plush, velveteen, luxurious, and I wish she hadn't sat there. My chair! My place!

I know something's happening, she whispers in a low steady voice that reminds me of another girl I once knew. Happening to you. To all of us, but I think that she's really just meaning me, not saying what she means. Professor, one part of me says, and the other fights back and says Minerva, and I can feel the battle raging within me, the battle between me and other-me, the two parts of myself. But somehow my feet shuffle through the shag rug and my legs bend and I sit. My mouth opens - tongue I burnt, with the cloying taste of too-rich hot cocoa - and I begin to speak, and I am transported. Back. Back in time to places I thought had been destroyed and ground into dust as fine as that that blows outside.

But they have not. Or why would they live in my memory?

-----****

**American Woman**

Minerva used to write poems. I can say that Minerva used to because I'm not Minerva now am I? Only... no. Used to. But Minerva's dead now.

Living on Mango Street, watching Angel Vargas fall off the roof and not caring. Getting hit, what do I do, only nobody could tell me. Just me and the husband, the kids, two kids. Pancake dinner, I remember, and spaghetti lunch, because spaghetti's cheap. Cheap in money, we were poor. Poor in love and money. Poor in what matters, but I never knew. Kids grew up bad, husband was gone, didn't come back again one day and I was glad. Records and shoes had gone out the door and never came back in, never made me black-and-blue again.

No job, no money, no family, just three hungry mouths and rent to pay. Moved into the little red house and left again, couldn't stay there, no way, no how. So we sit on the sidewalk, penny cup in hand, penny for the poor, penny for the homeless, I'll work for you, I went up to seventh grade!

And then the man came, the man I didn't want to trust because he was a man. Stopped in front of me, just sudden, head turned all surprised. Why are you just sitting there? he asked me. You shouldn't be. What could I do but leave the kids at the little red house again and go with him, always worried, always frightened. But the question was die which way? So of course I couldn't not. And the man wasn't like the husband anyway, no, he was tall. Eyes that sparkled bright bright blue like the neon of a sign, hair as long as mine or longer and white, a funny air of being dressed up not dressed when he walked by in those jeans.

The wall opened, scared me even more I remember, but I was just a little girl. So little, not ready for the kids, not ready for life, just sixteen and worried. Don't cry, he said, and I didn't somehow. Just... didn't. And I was safe, I knew, and even when he took me far away I wasn't afraid anymore because he reminded me of Bumpa when I was a baby and Bumpa wouldn't do something bad to me. And my name was different, Minerva McGonagall, not Peréz, McGonagall like the Irish or something from across the sea. I'm not Minerva anymore, I told the man. I'm McGonagall. And he smiled and called me that, like you say the name of a baby. 

The rain was falling on Chicago when I left, not left on a plane, left in a fireplace. The sun was shining in England when I came.

-----

**Smiles**

Smiles are different everywhere. They say everyone smiles in the same language, but they don't, they don't. There's smirks and half-smiles and they're all perfect and perfectly different. I don't know what you meant when you smiled at me, Professor Grolier, I don't. The smile was not in my language. Tell me, please, tell me - I want to know, I want to know so badly because I'm afraid that it's important. That it's so important. 

I should know, Professor Grolier. You're making me back into sixteen and frightened. No, I've never heard of the Daily Prophet, I said, and they all laughed but I didn't know why. You're smiling in a different language, they talk in a different language. So quiet, still, but I can feel the laughter in me. Laughter, ripping at me, laughter. I'm like a boggart. Laughter and smiles.

-----

**Prophetess Sybil**

How old are you, she asked me when I first met her. How old are you? Eighteen I told her. Eighteen, in my first year of college, isn't that normal? 

Her eyes were big and stared at me. I remember being scared, like she could see right through me. I'm Sybil, she said. I'm eighteen too. You're older than eighteen, you look like it, you feel like it. You're forty at least. 

No, I'm eighteen.

Forty, she told me confidently, little big-eyed girl, looked so fragile next to the big black trains. I know. You've got two kids, little kids you abandoned, and I punched her so hard she couldn't stop crying. Just cried and cried, eye turning black, just like mine did.

I'm not Minerva Peréz, I told her, I'm not. You're not, she said right back. Not Minerva Peréz! No! Not! But you're always yourself, she whispered quiet-like. I couldn't say anything, not nothing at all. Running, I remember running away from her, she wouldn't tell the Muggle police who I was, praise magic. 

Sybil saw me again today, wanting what Ginny told me, but Ginny didn't tell me at all. I know what about Professor Grolier, she told me, and I wanted to know, but I just thinned my mouth into that little white line and denied anything she asked. Ginny was here, she said, and I couldn't tell a lie, but what did Ginny say? And that's my own buisness, thank you. Did you know that she - ? Only by then I had packed Sybil out the door and I didn't have to mind anymore, just sit there and wonder.

Professor Grolier. What could she know?

-----

**The Rain Dance**

Rain dances in puddles. It does, really, and the noise is murmuring-soft. Music.

A ripple flows across the surface of the water softly, almost as though it were afraid to break something. Little ripples, only filling the whole puddle because of so many. 

Life is made of little ripples, little things that add up to bigger things, bigger things that add up to the biggest of all. And the rain flows down and washes the earth and the sun returns to make the seeds grow and the seeds drink the water of the rain and die and replenish the soil and their water runs down to the oceans and all is right in the world, I once read, and it sticks in my mind now.

I wonder where that first-grade teacher is who read that to me. I wonder if the ripples have caught up to her yet, because they're starting to catch up to me, and I'm not sure that I want to be swept into the rain dance. And the rain flows down and washes the earth and the sun returns to make the seeds grow and the seeds drink the water of the rain and die and replenish the soil and their water runs down to the oceans and all is right in the world. The rain dance continues outside my window, the wide wide window I made when I first came here, the window that opens onto the rising sun. You can't see the sunrise this morning. It's too cloudy, but you know the sun is there.

-----

**Praying Mantis Eats Her Mate**

Splash like the rain, I remember the blood that filled the bath, falling off the sides, a waterfall only redder. The magical bubbles hovering over the body, keeping vigil, looking down with their filmy eyes and brilliant stare. And the face, the pretty face, the beautiful wholesome pretty face that had the milk-white eyes. Eyes that rolled back in her head, looking at something nobody else can see.

Slowly she began to eat herself, I know. Manta Cummings, with the auburn hair that has turned black and thick like solid blood. Green Slytherin wraps around her arms covered scars that were deeper than they seemed. Should've known, should've known, should've known before now!

She began to eat herself because of secrets, the long secret, the secret that one can never ever really keep. Secret birth. Her parents were Muggles and that won't do, will never do, can't do, not in Slytherin - even though Tom Riddle, yes, even though, he was always worse than Manta but better in many many ways. I remember Tom.

Manta has long stripes of open, never fully healed, just bare in the darkened room. Clotted over, just barely; water seeping in, distending the arms. They're a little puffy underwater and I can't touch them.

I won't.

I can't think about Manta, about her livingness and lovingness and dyingness that are all encapsulated in this moment. Manta naked in the bath, the bloodbath. And perhaps this was her beginning as well as her end.

-----

**Day of Dreamers**

Sundays are dreamersdays, day for church, day for a broad smile up to the sky that you don't know about. Nobody knows about the sky. But it's a dreamersday and I'm dreaming today, just like you are, just like everyone is. 

Sailing, sailing, over the deep blue sea! Anjy is the loudest most bubbly person I have ever had the misfortune to meet, singing around the school on this dreamersday, but I don't know why I don't like it. After all she's only a kid, only a little little kid with double-pierced ears and a nose ring and a punkish glare that doesn't combine well with her personality at all. 

I remember that I once used to be like that, that I used to be the little ghetto girl. Not exactly like, no, not perfect: nothing's perfect, and nobody. But Anjy and I are alike in more ways that she knows, more ways than she's ever thought about. But who am I kidding? I'm just her Transfigurations teacher. We're both different things on the inside and out - I was so poor, so low, so desperate, but with a mind I never had cared to use; she's the dangerous black leather rocker, yet she's always so happy and it shines through no matter what she's doing.

Dreamersday Sundays. Sonntag. It's the day of dreamers and I know that Anjy and I are both dreamers, because how else can she be so happy all the time? There's just not enough to be happy with in the regular world. And today I'm dreaming of Manta and Anjy and all the little girls who are so much like I was or not like at all, and dreaming of tomorrow. And of my lost ones, the ones I had to leave behind. And of the little red house and Esperanza.

-----

**Großen Zaubererbuch**

It's a big book and it knows it; I snap at it as it grows heavier and heavier under my hands. Stop that, book, I tell it. You aren't _that_ heavy. Just stop it. And it stops, like a little whipped puppy, all of a sudden light in my arms. Well, be that way then, just make sure I can carry you, okay? And it's heavy again. Figures, I suppose. Books that are intelligent don't usually like people that much; they're jealous of their knowlege and want to keep it for themselves alone. 

I drop the book thankfully on the table, then seat myself and flip through it from back to front, heading for the "G" section. Gysech, Gxen, Gruen... Grolier. The pages are thin and rip easily; I almost don't want to touch them.

Grolier, Sarah. That's all it says. From all the wizards in the world there is only one Grolier, Sarah Grolier... and it's not the good professor. She's Nereida. Nereida... and I know, all of a sudden, what I had maybe sort of thought before. Fingers flying, quick quick quick, mind whirling, but then a sort of peace. I'm a little bit closer to being dead than I was yesterday, I think to myself, and then I don't think at all, just flip.

Peréz, Minerva  
Peréz, Nereida

The entry is small and unassuming in the tiny print, but it seems to jump out at me among all the other Perézes in the list. Nereida. How many Nereidas are there, how many Nereida Perézes? And how many... Nereida Groliers? There are no Nereida Groliers because she never was, she was running away just like me, but she was worse off... all alone, my baby, my girl...

I can't do anything. I can't change the past. I can't take her with me way back then. I cry and cry and cry on the thin paper pages, the ink running a little, the names slowly getting washed away. There is no more Minerva Peréz. There is no more Nereida Peréz. There is no more... no more... the big book, the book that told me something... she knew all along, so why didn't she ever tell me...

We both want to put the past behind us, just as far as it can be. I won't ask. I don't even really want to know. She once was my daughter but now she is not; I gave her up long ago - my mind did anyway yet my heart screams and the tears fall in a steady rythym. The past is gone. It is dust. And I will not remember it; I will be myself again.

I carefully close the book on the wet page and put it back on the shelf. It only takes a second to cast the mask spell, and with a stern face I walk out of my study. I am now Minerva McGonagall.

-----  
finis 3/?  
-----

List of Vingettes:  
Banana Split - tilpS ananaB  
American Woman  
Smiles  
Prophetess Sybil  
The Rain Dance  
Praying Mantis Eats Her Mate  
Day of Dreamers  
Großen Zaubererbuch

Notes on text: Großen Zaubererbuch means "Big Sorcerer Book." Very rough translation, and I really hope it means that, 'cuz it would be embarrassing if it didn't. 


End file.
